Chicken Shop, Bow, East London 2005

Britain / staged

IMBALANCE

In Britain we have a kind of contract, a promise, that keeps us moving forward; it’s an agreement between the people, individuals and government. Not one of these parts works alone, and each has rights and responsibility to each other and the whole. When it works, these islands bend towards fairness, freedom, growth and safety for all people.

Sometimes there are imbalances. Maybe people retreat, rebel or no longer participate; perhaps the rules become heavy handed or unfair. Whatever the reason, for good or for worse, the country shifts; and with it the people too.

These pictures echo these ideas at a granular level. Attempting to show each individuals journey, their thoughts and decisions. They reflect the documentary tradition and commercial brief, but also a desire to produce work that attempts to answer these questions using staged scenes and the language of advertising. They show the development of a multilayered analysis, a struggle within the limited language of the market, and a deeper, story based approach.

Keanu, Ilford, East London 2006

Why Can't you Marry a Nice Jamaican Girl, London 2005

The Decision, Blackhorse Lane,
East London 2011

Fey, Walthamstow, East London 2007

Britain / real

When your born in a town like Brighton in the mid-seventies, you spend your early years safe within steely assumptions of what it means to be British. The everyday paraphernalia of punk, scooters, soul boys, candy floss and slot machines immerse you in a particular picture postcard world of Britishness. No one questions that.

And when that changes. And you not sure why. You begin to ask yourself some fundamental questions…. You start to look harder and listen more, not just at stuff around you, but to storytellers that had gone before; you try and find answers.

The direct messages in realist imagery has an instant appeal: Mid C20 cinema from Italy and then the UK, photography by the likes of Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank as well as the narratives in music all seem to address those fundamental questions. This imagery stays with you, seeps into your consciousness and work at you from all sides. You realise that some of the most powerful photography works on these deeper, emotional levels, and it was this potential that I wanted to explore.

This selection of images represent an attempt to realise and develop some of those formal and theoretical challenges, as well as try to reconcile the questions, pressures and dreams which shape the lives of people in the British Isles today.